Honestly,
work might go better if more of us understood improv.
When people hear “improv,” they may picture some guy with an eighties mustache at a place called the Chuckle Hut, tapping the microphone. “Is this thing on?”
Not necessarily the people reviewing your vacation policy.
Improv—short for improvisation—is performance without a prepared script. People build a scene together by listening, responding, and working with what someone else just said.
Which sounds suspiciously like a meeting, except the people doing improv admit they don’t know what’s going to happen.
Not every staff meeting needs a scene partner, a spotlight, or someone pretending to be a toaster.
We have enough going on.
But a few principles translate particularly well to work.
First: listen to what’s actually being said.
Not just enough to locate the opening for the speech you prepared while someone else was talking.
In improv, your partner might introduce something that changes the whole scene. If you miss it because you’re planning your next brilliant line, you’re suddenly having a different conversation from everyone else.
That happens at work, too. Someone explains why a process isn’t working, and we begin defending why we created it.
Meanwhile, they’re still trying to tell us where it breaks.
Listening sounds more like:
“What is this person actually telling me?”
“What changed because of what they just said?”
“What do I understand now that I didn’t understand five minutes ago?”
Second: accept what’s been offered and build on it.
That’s the idea behind “yes, and.” In a scene, you work with what your partner introduces. At work, you can acknowledge someone’s goal without approving every way they propose getting there.
I’ve often been told it’s easier to turn a no into a yes than a yes into a no.
There are situations where that is useful advice. Making a promise before you understand the consequences can leave you with some explaining to do.
But if “no” becomes our permanent starting position, we can stop exploring before we’ve understood the question.
HR sometimes gets cast as the messenger pigeon of “no”—red pen ready, glasses perched at the tip of our nose, scanning the room for something to prohibit.
But what if we started with “yes, and”?
Not “yes” to every request. Yes to understanding what someone is trying to accomplish—and then helping them find a workable way forward.
“Yes, I understand why you want to move quickly, and let’s figure out how to do that without skipping a step we need.”
The boundary may stay. The conversation changes.
Sometimes the answer really does need to be no. We can explain the reason, ask what the person needs, and explore whether another approach is possible. We don’t have to disguise a refusal as agreement.
Third: help your scene partner succeed.
You’re building something together. If your greatest contribution is proving that everyone else is doing it wrong, the scene is going to be a very long three minutes.
At work, this means helping someone understand what they need to do, rather than simply announcing that they’ve done it incorrectly.
“This request is missing the information we need” may be accurate.
“Here are the two things we need to move this forward” gives them somewhere to go.
The requirement hasn’t changed. You’ve made it easier to meet.
We can hold people accountable and still want them to succeed.
Fourth: respond to what happens.
The script in your head may be beautiful. Unfortunately, nobody else received a copy.
You prepare for a conversation about missed deadlines. Then the person tells you they’ve been receiving conflicting priorities from two different leaders.
That information matters.
You may still need to address the deadlines. You also need to understand the conflicting instructions.
Adapting might sound like:
“That changes my understanding. Let’s sort out the priorities before we decide what needs to happen next.”
Changing your approach when you learn something new is part of using your judgment.
You don’t have to keep delivering the conversation you planned after the facts have changed.
You don’t need to become the har-har-har of HR.
It asks us to listen closely, understand what someone is trying to accomplish, help them take the next step, and adjust when new information arrives.
The conversation will go off script.
We can still make something useful together.
Reflections.
When someone brings me an idea, do I look first for what could work or for the reason it cannot?
Am I listening to understand, or waiting for my turn to explain?
What new information would make me reconsider the approach I’ve already chosen?
From the toolbox: Listen, build, adjust.
One. Listen. Name the goal or concern you heard before responding to the proposed solution.
Two. Build. Explain what is possible, what boundary applies, and one way forward.
Three. Adjust. When new information arrives, say what it changes.
Four. Rehearse. Before a difficult conversation, try your opening with a trusted person who can protect the details. Ask them to tell you what they heard, then practice responding to a question you did not expect.
Five. Close the loop. Before you part ways, agree on the next step, who will take it, and when you will reconnect. A useful conversation should leave both people knowing what happens next.
Try this:
“I understand what you’re trying to accomplish. Here’s the part we need to work through. Let’s look at what we can do.”
You don’t have to say yes to everything to help someone move forward.
Sometimes you just have to stop treating “no” as the opening line.
